Network Help Needed -- Need more information

Is there somewhere where I can get an in-depth description of what the parallels networking software does on windows? Specifically:

• What is the parallels mini-port network interface? How is it used/referenced by the Host OS? How is it used/referenced by the Guest OSes?
• What is the Parallels service for the other network interfaces? How is it used/referenced by the Host OS? How is it used/referenced by the Guest OSes?
• What does the Deterministic Network Enhancer do? how does it interact with Parallels?

I have a laptop (dual core, 2GB ram) with 802.11G, bluetooth, and Gigabit ethernet network interfaces. I connect to the internet via ethernet at work and wireless at home. I am required to turn wireless off at work. I have to use the Cisco VPN client to communicate with the home office intranet. The laptop is running windows XP.

I need to create a virtual network (192.168.0.0-192.168.0.255) that hosts all my Guest OSes and my host OS. The Guests and Host should be able to communicate with the internet via NAT. The virtual network should be invisible to the LAN that the laptop is connected to. The Cisco VPN software should work through the NAT application/daemon software.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

No direct support... No forum support... This sucks.

 

It may be that no one knows the answer to your problem!

What you are asking is quite complicated.

don

 

Shared Networking will be our answer

It sounds as though we have similar setups and similar needs.

In my case, my VM is used for corporate communications, since the VPN stuff we must use practically strangles the machine. By containing that in the VM, the rest of the machine runs unhindered. It's a great solution and works well with any network that's free with its IP assignments. But enter a situation where the network doles out a single IP address, and we Windows users are screwed: with the current 2.2 version of the Parallels Workstation, the VM looks like a separate machine and will not be allowed to connect. In some hotspot situations you can do a separate login but that might mean you pay twice too.

I've posted about this on this forum and have enjoyed no small amount of incorrect, unworkable and flat wrong advice from friendly fellow users.

Good news, the problem has been solved with the "shared networking" mode! Bad news, that isn't available for Workstation users yet... just (Mac) Desktop users.

I'm assured that the next rev will bring this feature to Workstation users too, within "a few weeks". Sure hope so! The Workstation software works flawlessly otherwise, but this shortcoming has me testing other VMs. (And by the way, VirtualBox looks interesting, and the price is certainly right, but per my testing so far: it sucks.)

 

I have it working now.

I made it all work (no thanks to the elusive parallels support team). I'm going to get around to writing a howto article soon (maybe this weekend). In short, the following is needed:

• Turn off the parallels driver on the connection that will be used to connect to the lan (wireless and/or wired).
• Make sure the parallels driver for the parallels miniport adapter is turned on.
• Enable internet sharing (aka ICS) under the advanced tab for the LAN connection on your host OS.
• Set the virtual NICs on you guest OSes to be either DHCP or fixed IPs between 192.168.0.3 and 192.168.0.99. If using fixed IPs, manually set your DNS to be 192.168.0.1
• Set your Parallels miniport adapter IP to 192.168.0.1
• Disable your firewall software

There may be more detail that I have forgotten. When I write the howto, it will be more detailed. This setup works like a charm. Now All of the guest OSes and the Host OS can connect to the internet and the Guest and Host OSes can see each other on the 192.168.0.x network. The LAN can't see anything on the 192.168.0.x network.

 

Me too

If I set static IP info for the guest ethernet that's in my router's range the guest OS (Kubuntu) gets network access, but I lose network access on the WinXP host wifi.

If anyone has more info on how to get bridging working, please share.

Cheers,
Nick.

 

Ok, I got my setup working.

Hopefully this might help someone else ...

My setup is:
- WinXP host with LAN and Wifi interfaces
- Kubuntu 6.10 guest

Problems:
- guest DHCP didn't work, so no guest networking
- guest static IP info would work for the gest but disabled host networking

Solution:
- set Parallels Network Preferences so DHCP is in my router's IP range. (Despite the tab label and manual stating this is used for host-only networking, I found it affected bridged networking too.)
- set host "Parallels Host-Guest Virtual NIC" network interface "route metric" to a low-priority value (which is a _larger_ number than other interfaces).

Windows network interface selection is based on the route metric, and I found the Parallels NIC had a lower metric (higher priority) than my other interfaces - it was being selected when connected, but this connection did not work for host apps. Setting this metric to a low-priority larger value (50) resolved this problem.

To view current network interface metrics, open a console and type:
route print

More information about route metrics, including how to change them, is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0903.mspx

Cheers,
Nick.
Cheers,
Nick.